Short-range wireless data networks have become commonplace, being found in homes, coffee shops, and places of business. Short-range wireless standards, such as 802.11x, and to some extent Bluetooth, provide network users with mobility and easy network access. However, this ease of wireless network access poses problems to network administrators including securing network traffic and preventing unauthorized network access.
Manufacturers of short-range wireless equipment have attempted to address the security issues posed by intrusive and unauthorized traffic through protocols, such as wireless application protocol (WAP), and encryption mechanisms such as wired equivalent privacy (WEP) and Wi-Fi protected access (WPA). The WAP protocol, for example, provides services for wireless devices that include security layers, such as wireless transport layer security (WTLS), that are designed to provide privacy, data integrity and authentication between communicating applications. WEP is an algorithm used to protect wireless communications from eavesdropping through data encryption. WEP relies upon a key that is shared between a mobile station and an access point. The key is used to encrypt packets before they are transmitted, and an integrity check is used to verify that the packets are not modified in transit. WPA is a security enhancement for Wi-Fi networks that defines the use of the advance encryption standard (AES) as an additional replacement for WEP encryption.
However, even with these security methods and mechanisms, wireless networks tend to extend beyond traditional physical boundaries, allowing users outside the boundaries to gain unauthorized access to networks. As such, improved systems and methods for managing access to short-range wireless networks would be desirable.